her, “You are one lucky young lady.”
Tina Something: In every gaddamn photo I have of me and Wax, he’s gone, just disappeared. They’re only photos of me, smiling, with my arm looped around nothing. My lips puckered, kissing air. When I try, I can’t even tell you if his eyes were brown or green. Ask me again in a few months and a hundred bucks says I’ve never, ever heard of Karl Waxman.
Shot Dunyun: The way Rant told it to me, Simms didn’t want him to go back in time to fuck anybody. Now that Simms was his own super-hybrid, he wanted to be immortal. Simms wanted Rant to go back in time and kill his mom. Well, I guess—their mom.
35–A Flashback
Chester Casey ( Farmer): Here comes a load of bullpucky.
The night before my boy, Buster, goes and kills himself, some old coot tells him this long, impossible yarn. This rich old coot named Simms says how, when he was Buster’s age and first moved to the city, he was in a car wreck. This Green Taylor Simms is a young man just driving along, and a car coming in the opposite direction, it crossed the centerline without slowing down a hair, and slammed into the man’s car.
Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher): The way Rant told me the story, Simms wakes up in a hospital bed, asking, “How long have I been here?” And the nurse tells him, “Four days…”
Echo Lawrence ( Party Crasher): At the hospital, this young guy asked, “What happened to my car?”
And the doctors said, “What car?” The police found him unconscious in the street. He was bruised, with a broken collarbone and breastbone.
The guy asked, “Where’s my clothes?”
And the doctors said, “What clothes?” The police had found him naked.
Chester Casey: Everybody knows this is crazy talk, but Buster didn’t know that. Buddy must’ve believed the old man.
Echo Lawrence: All those years ago, the police asked the guy his name and how to contact his family, and this guy told them. The next day, they came back to his hospital bed and told the guy that those people, his family, they didn’t exist.
Shot Dunyun: The cops asked for his name and Citizen ID and Social Security numbers. And a day later, they told the man that he didn’t exist.
Echo Lawrence: In the hospital, the doctors took one look at the scars on the guy’s arms, the punctures and puckers in his skin, and they asked, “What drugs were you doing?”
They asked, “Were you aware that you’re infected with rabies?”
Jarrell Moore ( Private Investigator): The injuries that Simms described to Rant Casey—the bruises across the iliac crest of the man’s hips, the cracked sternum, and the broken clavicle—these are all consistent with injuries inflicted by lap and shoulder belts during a high-speed head-on collision.
Shot Dunyun: So, when Green Taylor Simms was twenty-three years old, he sneaks out of that hospital. As soon as they mention a move to the psych ward, he bails before they can put him behind a locked door. Simms steals some clothes and shoes, and bails. And outside, in just the four days he’s lost, the city isn’t divided into day and night. Not anymore. Nobody is ported on the back of their neck. People are reading: Books. Magazines. Newspapers. Through windows, he can see people watching television. From radios and stereos—music.
Simms hitches a ride to the only place that seems safe. He goes back home to his family’s house, in Middleton. Yeah, the same hometown as Rant.
Chester Casey: Breaks your heart, the load of loony insane lunacy that old Simms coot unloaded on my boy.
Shot Dunyun: In the few years since Simms had moved to the city, somebody had cut down the four locust trees that each stood at a corner of his family’s yard. Planted there were four spindly locust saplings, not hand-high. On the house, Simms told Rant, somebody had replaced the buckled, blistered siding with straight new boards painted so clean white they looked blue. The paint, so fresh you could still smell it. His key
Tina Something: In every gaddamn photo I have of me and Wax, he’s gone, just disappeared. They’re only photos of me, smiling, with my arm looped around nothing. My lips puckered, kissing air. When I try, I can’t even tell you if his eyes were brown or green. Ask me again in a few months and a hundred bucks says I’ve never, ever heard of Karl Waxman.
Shot Dunyun: The way Rant told it to me, Simms didn’t want him to go back in time to fuck anybody. Now that Simms was his own super-hybrid, he wanted to be immortal. Simms wanted Rant to go back in time and kill his mom. Well, I guess—their mom.
35–A Flashback
Chester Casey ( Farmer): Here comes a load of bullpucky.
The night before my boy, Buster, goes and kills himself, some old coot tells him this long, impossible yarn. This rich old coot named Simms says how, when he was Buster’s age and first moved to the city, he was in a car wreck. This Green Taylor Simms is a young man just driving along, and a car coming in the opposite direction, it crossed the centerline without slowing down a hair, and slammed into the man’s car.
Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher): The way Rant told me the story, Simms wakes up in a hospital bed, asking, “How long have I been here?” And the nurse tells him, “Four days…”
Echo Lawrence ( Party Crasher): At the hospital, this young guy asked, “What happened to my car?”
And the doctors said, “What car?” The police found him unconscious in the street. He was bruised, with a broken collarbone and breastbone.
The guy asked, “Where’s my clothes?”
And the doctors said, “What clothes?” The police had found him naked.
Chester Casey: Everybody knows this is crazy talk, but Buster didn’t know that. Buddy must’ve believed the old man.
Echo Lawrence: All those years ago, the police asked the guy his name and how to contact his family, and this guy told them. The next day, they came back to his hospital bed and told the guy that those people, his family, they didn’t exist.
Shot Dunyun: The cops asked for his name and Citizen ID and Social Security numbers. And a day later, they told the man that he didn’t exist.
Echo Lawrence: In the hospital, the doctors took one look at the scars on the guy’s arms, the punctures and puckers in his skin, and they asked, “What drugs were you doing?”
They asked, “Were you aware that you’re infected with rabies?”
Jarrell Moore ( Private Investigator): The injuries that Simms described to Rant Casey—the bruises across the iliac crest of the man’s hips, the cracked sternum, and the broken clavicle—these are all consistent with injuries inflicted by lap and shoulder belts during a high-speed head-on collision.
Shot Dunyun: So, when Green Taylor Simms was twenty-three years old, he sneaks out of that hospital. As soon as they mention a move to the psych ward, he bails before they can put him behind a locked door. Simms steals some clothes and shoes, and bails. And outside, in just the four days he’s lost, the city isn’t divided into day and night. Not anymore. Nobody is ported on the back of their neck. People are reading: Books. Magazines. Newspapers. Through windows, he can see people watching television. From radios and stereos—music.
Simms hitches a ride to the only place that seems safe. He goes back home to his family’s house, in Middleton. Yeah, the same hometown as Rant.
Chester Casey: Breaks your heart, the load of loony insane lunacy that old Simms coot unloaded on my boy.
Shot Dunyun: In the few years since Simms had moved to the city, somebody had cut down the four locust trees that each stood at a corner of his family’s yard. Planted there were four spindly locust saplings, not hand-high. On the house, Simms told Rant, somebody had replaced the buckled, blistered siding with straight new boards painted so clean white they looked blue. The paint, so fresh you could still smell it. His key
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